A Yoruba Ìjálá (hunting poems) from Nigeria (see also Hunters’ Salutes). The poem describes vividly the buffalo’s attributes of speed and terrifying strength.

Buffalo, we salute you:
Butterfly of the savannah (1)
skimming along without touching the grass:
Corpulent beast,
equally at home in the thick forest
and in the wooded plain:
You have not presented the hunter with a wife
and yet he prostrates himself before you: (2)

Hunters pose ceremonially on the head
of the elephant they have just killed,
But who would dare pose on the head of a fallen buffalo,
the raging buffalo of the bone-hard horns? (3)

Let the hunter whose medicinal charms have lost their potency
give up pursuing the buffalo.
In case the beast accidentally devours him like grass.
The demon who frightens a young hunter,
making him scramble up even the thorniest tree:
The demon who has razors at the tips of his horns:
Buffalo, ancient beast,
when you hear roaring (4)
and there is no rain,
that is the buffalo!